New Science study links bee-killing neonics to mass death of waterlife

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New Science study links bee-killing neonics to mass death of waterlife

If any of you are concerned about the disappearance of insects, birds, fish, dragonflies, damselflies etc from the countryside (along with mass bee deaths) - this article is extremely important. In Holland, where they use neonics intensively in the tulip-fields and in glass-house vegetable - the field water, water in ditches, ponds and streams is so toxic that it would make an effective insecticide. It's not just bees - it is poisoning the entire environment.

Re: New Science study links bee-killing neonics to mass death of waterlife

Borderbeeman is the chap who loves to invoke conspiracy, conflict of interest and wild talk about 'shills' on the Internet forums.

I notice that Randy Oliver has just made some comment about this paper on another forum.

Randy Oliver himself has often been accused of being a 'shill' because he does not blindly accept the mantra about neonics being the main problem bees have at the moment.

That said, let us now look more closely at the study. First, look who it
was funded by: the Triodos Foundation’s Support Fund for Independent
Research on Bee Decline and Systemic Pesticides.

This funding source suggests that the funders had an expectation of what
they wanted the results to be, and also greatly limited the scope of the
"research" (actually consisting solely of statistical analysis of existing
data gathered by water monitoring entities).

The authors were not out to determine the causes of species decline, but
rather only looked to see whether imidacloprid appeared to have any
statistical correlation. The authors make this clear. The point being
that since imidacloprid is associated with bulb growing, one would expect
to find higher concentrations of it in bulb-growing areas (the southwest of
the Netherlands). However, in those same areas one would also expect to
see high concentrations of some of the other up to 600 different compounds
monitored, including insecticides, herbicides, surfactants, fertilizers,
etc. The study did not address the contribution by any of these other
compounds.